Track daily progress of handcart pioneers

Lyman said he has no direct ancestors in either the Willie or Martin companies but was compelled to investigate because he found the details of their determination fascinating. He focused his research on the Willie group simply because he found more available information, particularly in the details of what happened where.

He approached the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers with a list of names of people he knew had been part of the Willie Company and found their research to be a great resource. Stories they had gleaned from the descendants of company members were added to the journal accounts kept by the company clerk, as well as by Levi Savage, Peter Madsen and William Woodward.

Lyman has included Chislett's remembrance of the disaster, though at the time it was written, "he had left the church. Not one other journal account or reminiscence is negative. Everyone else treats it as 'this is what I'm supposed to be doing in life.' They may complain that it's cold, but they are following the prophet."

By combining the journal accounts, Lyman said he was able to track the company all the way from Great Britain, through their six-week crossing of the Atlantic, their landing in New York, crossing the Hudson River, and the train trip to Iowa. His book will contain maps of where the company camped at each location he was able to document along the handcart route. "I may not have the exact location in each spot, but I believe they're all within a quarter mile of where the pioneers were," he said.

There are only a couple of segments where he hasn't been able to determine where the trail went, when the company may have taken another route for a couple of days.

"Everyone thinks they followed Brigham Young's path, but they clearly didn't. No one has printed things up on this other 'new' trail at all. They crossed the Platte River two additional times because they were starving at that point and didn't want to go uphill with the trail. They would rather stay where it was flat and cross the water," he said.

Jack Welch, a BYU law professor and editor of BYU Studies, said the Web site was a natural expansion of Lyman's work during the sesquicentennial year of the handcart pioneers.

"We had just finished doing the Joseph Smith day-by-day Web site," as part of the LDS Church's celebration of the 200th anniversary last year of Smith's birth. "I thought it would be wonderful if people could sign up to have an e-mail sent to them every day from the Willie Company," alerting them to what happened that day in the history of the company's trek. A link to sign up is available on the Web site.